Apart from rereads, I realised that I didn’t actually read a ton of (good) books with a romance, so I didn’t have a ton to choose from for this prompt (and I did want to pick something other than an Ilona Andrews reread since IA is already very much featured in this post, as you will soon realise). In the end I went with Grey and Kier from The Second Death of Locke by V L Bovalino, who have the perfect slowburn.

To Be Taught, If Fortunate by Becky Chambers is all about characters from Earth on a space mission to explore exoplanets – can’t get much more away from home than that! And this book also deals with topics like the world moving on without you whilst you’re away, so I feel like ‘being away from home’ is also generally a significant theme in this book. It’s also truly excellent – one of my 5 star reads of the year.

And Every Morning the Way Home Gets Longer and Longer by Fredrik Backman made me sob for the entire hour+ bus ride it took me to listen it. Genuinely devastating, but oh so good. It’s about a grandfather explaining is dementia to his grandson and I genuinely could not stop sobbing. Luckily no one on the bus asked me if I was ok 😅

Since academic books are a bit more expensive, I often ask for them as presents if they’re not immediately relevant to my studies. This year I asked for a few but one that stands out is The Rise of Tea Culture in China by Bret Hinsch. If you’ve seen my Top Ten Tuesday post about my favourite teas, you might know that I’m just a little bit obsessed. I even volunteered for a little bit on a tea farm this past summer.

This could have easily been the Fredrik Backman book as well since I literally cried the entire time I was reading it. Since I already picked that one, though, I’ll go for The Garden of Evening Mists by Tan Twan Eng, which also had be sobbing on the metro.

This year I’m trying to work through some of the in-progress books I have on the go to try and start the new year with a slightly blanker slate, but normally I quite like reading fantasy (and especially rereading) fantasy over the holidays. Last year, for example, I reread the Innkeeper Chronicles series by Ilona Andrews (and now I really need the next book… please?).

Although I did read other individual books in trilogies this year, The Final Architecture trilogy by Adrian Tchaikovsky is my favourite of the ones that I read from start to finish! It’s an excellent space opera/intergalactic travel/existential threat to humanity type book and I read the last two books (500+ pages each) in something like 2-3 days total.

I’m going with a bit of an unusual pick for this one – Old Jang from Yeonnam-Dong’s Smiley Laundromat by Kim Jiyun. He’s an elderly retired pharmacist who lives alone with his dog. If we were snowed in together a) he wouldn’t be lonely, b) I can cuddle with his dog, and c) I feel like he would take really good care of us. We wouldn’t be hungry, if we were sick he’d know what to do. He just feels like a really warm, grandfatherly character!

The Ministry of Time by Kaliane Bradley received so much praise and the bookseller at Waterstones had said that all her colleagues loved it so I was really anticipating it when I picked it up and… let’s just say that this was not a case of being let down because of the hype raising my expectations. I buddy read this book and both me and my friend were not impressed. There was tons of potential but…

The first book in a new Ilona Andrews series comes out in April 2026 and it’s their first traditionally published series in a while, so hopefully it will introduce a lot more readers to their work. Plus the cover looks stunning. Keep an eye out for This Kingdom Will Not Kill Me, book 1 in the Maggie the Undying series!